Field Placement / Chapters 2 & 3

I am placed in an Emotional and behavioral support classroom at the Mulberry Street School in Lancaster. At my school there are two different classrooms, one for children aged 13-16, and one for children ages 9-12, which is the classroom that I am in. There are 9 children in my classroom, 7 boys and 2 girls, and the teacher informed me that they will be adding 3 more students within the next few weeks. My first day at placement all in all went very well. I was lucky enough to meet all of the students, teachers, aids, therapist, and staff (no one was absent). The staff was all very helpful in introducing me to the routines of the school and the classroom. There were 6 adults in the room total and several other adults stopped in for a bit throughout my time there. The setup of the room was very interesting. All of the students desks were spread throughout the room and all of them were out of arms reach from one another. Something that the head teacher said that I kind of took to be the motto of the school was "behavior first and academics second". The overall focus of the staff is to monitor and improve the behavior of the students. The teacher also told me that their school acts as a pre and post residential service, meaning that children are either placed there before they are placed back into the general education classroom, or before they are placed into a residential setting where they will receive round the clock support.

A concept mentioned in our book in chapter 2 is Functional Behavioral Assessment or FBA. FBA is a process of gathering information about a learner's behaviors in order to determine the purpose of a problem behavior in addition to its antecedents and consequences. This is a form of assessment that seems to be done often in this classroom. When I was asking the teacher about which child would be good to monitor for my BIP assignment, she mentioned a lot of the different behaviors of students in the classroom. She then went on to mention the antecedents of the behaviors, for example, she mentioned how the one student always starts to pull his hair before he has a behavioral outburst. She knew the signs of almost every student in the classroom which helps her to monitor and prevent negative behaviors. I believe that she has gained a lot of this knowledge about her students from FBA. She used her knowledge gained from the FBA to implement effective strategies to control and prevent target behaviors in the classroom. She has a bike (similar to the ones in a gym) that is stood at the front of the room. When a child starts to get heated or angry, she tells them to go and ride the bike to cool off, I saw this occur 2 or 3 times while I was there. She also has a "Think Tank" which is like a closed off time out zone where the kids are sent to cool down and think if they are heated or lashing out. While they are in this zone, they will fill out a "stop, Breathe & Think" sheet that makes them think about the behavior that they exhibited and how they could have better acted in that situation.

Both the Bike and the "think tank" are also examples of Positive Behavioral Supports mentioned in chapter 3 of our book. These are both strategies used to change and diminish the triggers of problem behaviors. Another example of a Positive Behavioral Support that I saw was the use of a quite work space in the hallway. One of the students into the class gets easily frustrated when working under loud/noisy conditions so the teacher has created a quite work zone in the hallway where that student may do his work. I can already see how these strategies are making a huge impact on the classroom and I am sure that I will see many other examples of FBA being and PBSs being used in the classroom.

The American Teacher

I recently viewed the documentary called "The American Teacher". and/or talked about throughout the film. I just wanted to start off with a side note. I wanted to say that I think this is a terrible movie to show college Education students. I think that it might make some students want to change their major and that it might frighten some of them away from the position. I don't see the positives of Education students viewing this film. Aside from that, I was very shocked and upset by much of the statistics, percentages, and stories that were shared

Some of the stats that disturbed me are as follows:
-over 90% of teachers spend their own money on teaching supplies (one teacher in the film spent over $3,0000 on her classroom her first full year of teaching)
-An average teacher works 65 hours per week
-"almost all teachers work at least one weekend day and some work 2"
-31% of teachers have a second job, and if you include tutoring/coaching/advising into the stat, 62% of teachers have a second job
-20% of teachers in urban school districts quit every year
-46% of teachers in America quit before their fifth year

There are also several stories that were shared throughout the film that upset me. One teacher worked two jobs and coached, then, due to never being home and working all of the time trying to support his family, he lost his marriage, then later he quit coaching (even though he loved it) so that he could spend more time with his children. He said "it seemed like the most logical decision" since he got paid more to work his second job than he did coaching. The movie ended with a quote from another male teacher. This teacher had to quit teaching due to the low salary and he moved into real estate. Although he had to leave teaching, the movie ends with him saying "teaching is the best job in the world, there is no comparison". there are countless other stories throughout this film that showed teachers who had to quit teaching due to the low salary even though they all loved teaching. I think that it is absolutely terrible that so many teachers have to quit and get new jobs, all because the schools and government won’t pay them more.

The quote that stuck out to me the most from the film was said by one of the teachers. She said "You’re not going into this to be a missionary. You’re not going into this to live a life of poverty. You are going into this because you feel like you really can do something to make the world a better place by giving kids the chance that they need and deserve in order to succeed, but combined with that, you have to be able to feed your own family". I think that this quote really nails what the author of the documentary is trying to get across. I think that teachers should get paid more for their work, especially those who are excellent at what they do. No one in the high paying jobs in America would get hired there if they didn't at least have a high school diploma. Therefore, without teachers, no one would be making more than teachers, so teachers should get paid a lot more since they are responsible for providing people with the knowledge to do these higher paying jobs.